Yesterday the 10 councillors (Labour) who run the council cabinet agreed a budget which includes subsidies for trade unions, clothing allowances for Labour councillors and no cuts to the cost of councillors. But most shocking of all – The budget will INCREASE RESERVES by millions of pounds this year and potentially by more in later years. The budget states that the council should aim to increase reserves from £26m to £35m.

I fully recognise the serious pressure on the council budget, in fact I think the Conservative Minister who runs the local government department is doing George Osbourne’s job instead of fighting the corner of local government.

But who in their right mind puts more money into RESERVES when they are cutting services and when what we need is a boost to the local economy. Only a lunatic would put even more millions in the bank when our roads and footpaths are falling apart. You’d have to be nuts not to invest in getting our young people into engineering and manufacturing when there is a skills gap across the County. There is so much more we could do now, but the Labour-run Cabinet appears to have buried its head in the sand.

Needless to say opposition councillors will be putting forward alternative budgets in a few weeks, Lib Dems included. We can’t sit by whilst Labour squirrels away money for some imaginary rainy day – it is pouring down out there and we need to get on with the job of boosting County Durham for the long term after decades of failure from a Labour run council and successive Labour and Conservative governments.

I wonder if Ed Milliband agrees with the local council that they should be hiding money away instead of investing in capital programmes and economic regeneration. I certainly don’t.